


What I Know Now

by Evie_adams273



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Astoria - Freeform, Depression, Draco's POV, Draco's point of view, Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, act three scene three, big sad, dark au, mentions of astoria - Freeform, office scene, some minor child abuse, the Big Sad, they're all sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evie_adams273/pseuds/Evie_adams273
Summary: Scorpius comes to Draco's office. Draco is ready to question his son's abnormal behaviour, but when he tries to, he doesn't get the answers he was expecting.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy & Scorpius Malfoy
Kudos: 21





	What I Know Now

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: minor child abuse  
> Basically the office scene

Draco folded over the letter, pocketing it again and trying to ignore the sickening feeling in his stomach. At this point, he felt somewhat disappointed in himself for not being used to the feeling. His son’s weekly letters had long since devolved into recounts about whoever he had tortured since he had last written.

Draco hated it, but he hated himself more knowing that he couldn’t blame Scorpius. Not really. This was the reality that his son had grown up in. This was the only option he’d ever been given. This was what he had learnt. And no matter how Draco tried to justify it to himself, he knew there had always been alternatives. He had just been too afraid to take them.

What would the outcome have been if he’d taken Dumbledore’s offer on the Astronomy Tower all those years ago? Would more people have survived? Would he have a life now?

Draco shook the thought. It was a hypothetical that he couldn’t think about because it could never actually have an effect on his life. He spent too much time considering hypotheticals that would get him killed if he ever tried to get to them. Maybe someone was already planning to kill him. It wouldn’t necessarily matter.

The letters never got brought up when Scorpius came to see him. The subject matter never got talked about. Normally Scorpius would complain about whatever was going on at school. Not enough Dark Arts lessons. Not enough power over others. Too many people rebelling against him. Draco never commented.

But Scorpius was late. Which was a problem. Given his reported behaviour since Voldemort Day, Draco actually had some questions that needed answering. There had been too many goings on to ignore.

Draco sighed. He would have liked to have had this conversation privately, at home. Where he could drive home a point without terrifying his son. But he couldn’t. Which meant that he had to wear the mask. Especially where Scorpius was concerned. His son wouldn’t hesitate to betray even him if he thought it would bring him further into the Augurey’s favour.

That was strange in the fact that Scorpius would not have said a word if they had been permitted to speak at home. The Manor, when they were alone, was safe territory. But here, where the evidence was directly obvious, Scorpius would make any attempt at a power grab that he could.

The Augurey. That fucking madwoman. Always going entirely further than necessary to get a point across. Terrifying the world until they just did her bidding mindlessly, which was how she liked it. And how Draco pretended to be. He may as well have been mindless. The most rebellious thing he had ever done was partly ignore Severus Snape’s allegiance. Snape didn’t even know that he was aware.

He glanced up a few minutes later, resisting the urge to roll his eyes when Scorpius stumbled into the office, looking around wildly.  
  
“You are late,” Draco looked down at his desk again. 

“This is your office?”

Something was wrong. Scorpius’ voice had never sounded like this before. He sounded scared, like this was a new concept and not one he had used to lord over his classmates. Draco ignored it.

“You are late and unapologetic. Maybe you are determined to compound the problem.”

“You’re Head of Magical Law Enforcement?”

“How dare you,” Draco snapped, again ignoring the strangeness of his son’s voice. “How dare you embarrass me, keep me waiting and then not apologise for it.”

Scorpius stopped. “Sorry.”

“ _Sir_.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I did not bring you up to be sloppy, Scorpius,” Draco started flicking through his files. “I did not bring you up to humiliate me at Hogwarts.”

“Humiliate you?” Scorpius stared, before adding, “sir–”

“Harry Potter? Asking questions about Harry Potter? Of all the embarrassing things. How dare you disgrace the Malfoy name.”

“No,” Scorpius stopped, “are you responsible?” He stared at Draco for a moment, before shaking his head, his shoulders shaking. “No – no – you can’t be.”

“Scorpius–”

“The Daily Prophet today: three wizards blowing up bridges to see how many muggles they can kill with one blast. Is that you?”

Scorpius sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. He was shaking and stumbling and his eyes were blotchy. Draco fought back the building worry. Here, he wasn’t a parent; he wasn’t Scorpius’ dad. He was his father. So he had to accentuate and act upon that difference. Because there was a huge fucking difference.

“Be very careful.”

“The Mudblood Death Camps,” Scorpius spat. “The torture. The _burning alive_ of those that oppose him! How much of that is you?” Silence. And then Scorpius started to walk towards him, still talking, getting angrier and angrier and angrier. “You know, mum _always_ told me you were a better man than I could see, but this is what you really are, isn’t it?”

Draco tried to continue breathing. Scorpius rarely talked about his mother, and Draco had adjusted to that. Sometimes, it was if she had never even existed. Draco could cope with that. Cope with the private mourning.

“You’re a murderer!” Scorpius kept shouting. “You’re a torturer! You–”

Draco saw red. Without thinking, he reached forward and seized Scorpius by the back of his head, slamming him into the desk. Scorpius stopped, whimpering and shaking as his hands went white due to the tightness with which he was holding the desk.

It wasn’t even directly because of what Scorpius had said. It was simply because the reminders of his wife and the (correct) accusations of being a torturing murderer came too close to one another. And it hurt.

“Do not use her name in vain, Scorpius,” Draco growled. “You do not score points like that. She deserves better.”

The anger dissipated as quickly as it had built. Almost immediately, Scorpius’ fearful whimpers made him feel undeniably sick. It wasn’t a sound he was used to. Scorpius never cried. Scorpius never showed weakness like this. Except now, he was sobbing as his father held him against a desk.

Draco let go. His son practically fell away from him, still clutching the back of his neck. Draco looked at him, trying to put some of whatever puzzle this was together. This wasn’t his son. If it was, this was no version of his son that he knew. 

“And no, those idiots blasting muggles, that wasn’t my doing. Though it will be me the Augurey asks to bribe the muggle Prime Minister with gold.”

Scorpius didn’t reply and Draco glanced down at his rings, uncomfortably aware that his wife would not have been proud of him for what he had done. For any of what he had ever done. Their son was now crying silently, trying to hide it, but failing.

Draco glanced at his office door, grateful to see that it was closed. He had questions. Too many to ask. It was as if he knew the answers would give him life, or a will to live, at the very least. That had been gone for nearly as long as Astoria.

So many questions, but there was only one that Draco really cared about the answer to. There was only one curiosity he had to satisfy.

“Did your mother really say that of me?”

Scorpius looked at him, his eyes still full of tears as he stood up a little straighter and tried to clear his throat awkwardly.

“She said that grandfather didn’t like her very much,” he sounded as if he was smiling, just a little. “Opposed the match. Thought that she was too muggle-loving. Too weak. But that you defied him for her.” Pause. “She said it was the bravest thing she’d ever seen.”

“She made being brave very easy, your mother,” Draco murmured, more to himself that anyone else.

He hadn’t really considered it before, but it was true. Astoria had made him brave enough to face each day. She had been strong and gentle and kind and compassionate. Draco had never understood how. Given the entire world, he had never understood any of it.

He had spent hours and days and months and years agonising over how she had managed to come into his life and spark some sort of bright light. Three years. Three years of absent emotion and self-loathing (that one still existed), and she had somehow managed to make the world shine. Even with the Dementors.

Hurting Scorpius had been a mistake. Not simply because he knew Astoria would have completely disapproved of where his temper had caused him to end up, but also because he was now looking at a part of Scorpius he had not seen since his son had been a young child.

Scorpius was still watching him, tears streaming down his face. He looked broken, defeated. As if there had been something riding on this meeting and it was now gone.

“But that was another you,” he croaked with a bitter smile. Draco didn’t say anything. “I’ve done bad things.” Pause. “ _You’ve_ done worse. What have we become, dad?”

“We haven’t become anything,” Draco frowned. “We simply are as we are.”

“The Malfoys,” Scorpius seemed to be close to spitting again. “The family you can always rely on to make the world a murkier place.”

Draco forced the swelling anger down again, though not before he’d dropped his book on the desk and walked over to his son. Scorpius flinched, but he didn’t move back. Draco glanced back at the door once more, and then he reached out and wiped away the stray tear on his son’s cheek. Scorpius looked down at the floor.

“This business at the school,” Draco spoke softly. “What has inspired it?”

“I don’t want to be who I am.” 

“And what’s brought that on?”

“I’ve seen myself in a different way,” Scorpius swallowed.

This was dangerous. In two sentences, this had become a dangerous conversation. If anyone caught them now, they would be arrested. It was a miracle no one had already interrupted them regarding Scorpius’ yelling. But this was worse. This wasn’t questioning. This was outright treason. And Draco couldn’t tell his son to be quiet because this was exactly how Astoria would have behaved.

Draco stopped. He wanted to say something. Something that actually meant more than keeping a façade. This bloody façade. The one that would probably end them entirely if they let it. It had that much.

“You know what I loved most about your mother?”

Stupid idea. He kept going.

“She could always help me find – light in the darkness. She made the world less – what was that word you used? Murky?”

“Did she?”

Draco continued to look at his son, trying to make sense of him. There were no answers. There was knowledge that, if this was a permanent change, that there was a large chance his son would get quite badly hurt, but no answers. Never any answers.

Like Astoria. Like his mother.

Astoria had always been calmly and quietly opposed to everything they had done. She had kept it quiet for the purpose of surviving, but Draco wouldn’t have been surprised if she had aided a rebel group in some way. He would have almost been disappointed if she hadn’t.

“There’s more of her in there than I thought,” he murmured to himself.

He looked at Scorpius again. He couldn’t cry. If he cried, they would both be screwed. Completely. But he couldn’t stop anymore. He couldn’t hide himself.

But he had to.

Whatever part of his son was showing, whatever was happening, he had to help his son. He would not let his son die. He would not let his son get hurt by what they all knew was wrong in this world. He walked back to his desk.

“Whatever you are doing, do it safely. I can’t lose you too.”

“Yes.” Pause. “Sir.”

Draco looked up again, shaking his head slightly. He crossed his hands.

“For Voldemort and Valour.”

Scorpius nodded back. “For Voldemort and Valour.”

And Draco watched him leave, unsure of what he could really do. He had no control. None of them did. They were all puppets and eventually they would die and that would be that.

He reopened the book on his desk.

**Author's Note:**

> So...Black Lives Matter. Please keep donating and signing petitions etc. And also...  
> FUCK JKR. Seriously, fuck her. Report her. Block her. Stop giving her a platform to spread hate.  
> -  
> Thanks for reading  
> Kudos and comments much appreciated  
> Twitter: @evie_adams273


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